Customers of Netflix's increasingly popular streaming service, somewhat surprisingly, may not see much change in the end (other than the advertised improved connection -- all the better to eat up your bandwidth cap). While we don't know what Netflix is paying Comcast for access, multiple industry insiders (Matthew Prince, Martin Geddes) and analysts believe it's less than what the company would pay carriers like Cogent, Akamai or Level 3 for the same thing. That should mean better service, without this type of change resulting in a higher bill. Will that be the case years from now, when Netflix requires more throughput for more customers streaming higher res video, and companies like Comcast control even more of the end users? It's hard to say, but investor response to the news is telling.
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